1. Field
The disclosed aspects relate generally to communications between and/or within devices and specifically to methods and systems for improving near field communication (NFC) routing information storage.
2. Background
Advances in technology have resulted in smaller and more powerful personal computing devices. For example, there currently exist a variety of portable personal computing devices, including wireless computing devices, such as portable wireless telephones, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and paging devices that are each small, lightweight, and can be easily carried by users. More specifically, the portable wireless telephones, for example, further include cellular telephones that communicate voice and data packets over wireless networks. Many such cellular telephones are being manufactured with relatively large increases in computing capabilities, and as such, are becoming tantamount to small personal computers and hand-held PDAs. Further, such devices are being manufactured to enable communications using a variety of frequencies and applicable coverage areas, such as cellular communications, wireless local area network (WLAN) communications, near field communication (NFC), etc.
In a typical NFC system, there may exist a communications device that includes a device host (DH), a near field communication controller (NFCC), and one or more secure elements (SEs), where the NFCC may store one or more routing tables in a nonvolatile memory. These routing tables typically govern message and data routing from external devices and/or internal NFC device components to and from the one or more SEs. As the number of SEs and their related application identifiers (AIDs) in an NFC device grows, so does the amount of routing information that must be stored in a data table to route an application request from an external device to the cored SE. The nonvolatile memory that this routing information is stored on, however, is costly. Therefore, it follows that adding SEs in an NFC device will drive up costs to the manufacturer and/or consumer by way of additional nonvolatile memory to support routing information for the SEs.
Thus, improved methods and apparatuses for improving NFC routing information storage are desirable.